Bylaw amendment proposal discussion

[hwahab]

What's reasonable, is your opinion. Hence the discussion of the bylaws, and the membership will decide through a vote if they deem it as such. As well as the yearly expenses and any changes to them . So to not further hijack this thread I will end my part here.

[dnicol]

Nice posts and explanations Mike.

Mac

[dacri]

Mike puts on a spectacular financial info session during the AGM, including expenditures. Darren has yet to attend. Anyone can question the union, but at least take the time to attend the meetings if your interested in being an honest critic.

Hey Butcher

So I miss one of your meetings and I’m now a member not in good standing??? Really lol

This is about Bylaws Amendments and Discussion ??

Sorry you don’t like my questions Derek

Darren

[cwaters]

Nice posts and explanations Mike.

Mac

+1
Mike has been a valuable member of the MEC and has set a new standard for treasurer.
No offence to past treasurerererurs.

[dacri]

Nobody has ever had “bottle service”.


You were sent a complete set of our union finances from the Auditor, from the past two years. There were no findings.

VP Butcher do you look at all the specific everyday expenses the membership submits???

Are you sure about your statements about “bottle service”??? I’ve heard different.

This third party Auditor’s report had nothing specific. Everything is lumped into general categories. No transparency!

I asked for specific details about our expenses and you (MEC) denied me access to the accounts.

I call bullshit.

Darren

[MBusuttil]

Hi there Darren,

The limit on expense policy is to mirror the National limit and any changes they decide to make. Right now, it's 90$ per diem. There is no mention on what a person spends per diem on. Just like our per diems at Sunwing. So, much like at Sunwing, where some people pack a lunch and save per diem and other people pay for whatever they want to eat or drink with it, we essentially do the same thing here. In fact, we are paying people up to 90$/day based on receipts and not 90$ day.

So we are essentially looking to set a new limitation specifically on alcohol spending. We don't have to. We're doing this for those members that have a problem with alcohol spending. There's actually not a lot of love for this new limit, and we may lose valuable volunteers. The idea is to put it in writing and now there's no more confusion. Many other locals in different organization would never dream of putting a limitation like this in, but this is our choice. I suppose OUR GROUP WILL CHOOSE with their vote whether they want this specific change.

I'm not sure what a bottle service is nor have I ever reimbursed a receipt for that... I would certainly ask questions! But I'm guessing a waiter just keeps bringing you a bottle of wine when one is empty? I don't know, is it just wine? "I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" (Tom Waits). But I see you are concerned about this Darren so why don't we add some wording to the expense code of conduct if there is support. Currently we're looking at:

"A maximum of 2 alcoholic beverages may be expensed per day while on Union Business. Receipts required." We could maybe make a change like this: "...& wine bottle services are prohibited".

To me, I don't think we need this wording but maybe I'm missing something? If anyone can back Darren up on this or believe the new limit is good enough please let me know on this thread.

Mike Busuttil

[thicking]

Jesus, how is this even a debate. The membership finances can be used for meals and a few beers for our volunteers. Thanks for the work guys. End of story. With Busitil running the finances, his incredible transparency with our money, and the fact he’s telling us a voted in code for this is coming, the great keg debate of 2020 should be dead.

Darren, as you are the leader of this forum ship And this very contentious food debate, I feel I should tell you what bottle service generally means. It’s when you go to a night club and order a bottle of hard liquor for 500 bucks. It’s normally something done in a VIP section in a place like Vegas or some night club In downtown Toronto at midnight. I think it’s a far cry from the glam that the Dixon Rd airport Keg provides. I don’t think they have a VIP section

Enough of this shit already. Where do you want them to eat? No frills? $90 a day is more then reasonable for volunteers to eat 3 meals and face a couple beers. It’s a bargain.

Focus your frustration on something more meaningful already. Is there any other Proposed bylaws You disagree with instead of food and beer payment? Jagoe got the ball rolling.

Busitil.... you’re great with our money. I agree with the above comments. Keep it up bud!

[MBusuttil]

Hi there Jason,

To your last point there were two important items that should be addressed:

1) PMTG and Vacation days. - I never really thought about this one before either. To be honest I suppose a person (me) could look ahead and see what vacations and weekends people have off and whether they are asking for PMTG days to extend their time off. Since we never had a rule on this before, I simply did not do that. So please place the blame on me and accept my apology but don't blame the volunteers for what you have seen on their schedules. My first thought is once again, this will drive away volunteers. I know it is actually hard to see value in that, you sort of have to see it in action though. I could list a lot of examples of our gains from our volunteers. But to your point, PMTG inherently supersedes seniority. They are these days that can simply be put on our schedules before the award. I like the idea of not using them on Stat days. I think we should adopt that and I think I will make the change after more internal and external discussion. Seems like a winner.

Your idea of not placing them around vacation days isn't bad in principle... I'm not sure yet. I don't think our volunteers get into union work with the goal of finding a way to extend their vacations. What do all of you think? Is this restriction worth adopting? People may say, the days are to be used for UNION business so put the restriction in place! But, to be honest, a lot of UNION workers work on their vacations. Or they will do the work around their vacation. Some people will do work on a layover in Toronto. As long as it gets done. Here's the thing, we created a budget (started 2 years ago and now proposed in these amendments) on PMTG for these committees and as long as we collectively get a return on investment for that budget, I'm a happy camper.

If there is a lot of uptake on your idea around: "not adding the days around Vacation" then perhaps we should make that change. As for long weekends... I think that's a stretch... but I'm just one guy.

2) UNIFOR Lawyer -

Where to begin. I think I will make this shorter. I think in particular members of compliance and MEC could chime in. So here's what I think on this and I may be wrong because I just don't keep track of everything:

- There's one labor lawyer for UNIFOR as far as I know. Maybe there's a few more but they are not available to us. I think he would not have the time for all of our grievances.
- I don't think anyone will ever understand our contract better than our own members who are up to snuff on it.
- We are looking into and should be successful (if not already) at making sure the company doesn't surprise us with meeting dates and rather there is mutual agreement to these dates. [Not a bargaining item but rather a MEC Business item btw]

This last item would really solve a lot of problems and especially the ones you have pointed out with respect to where days get awarded for previous work.

Mike Busuttil

[dacri]

Here’s a novel idea for a new bylaw amendment.

Any member in good standing will be given full unobstructed access to all bank accounts, statements, forms and original receipts.

Note: If any elected Union Official or Accountant is found to be obstructing another member seeking transparency they will be removed from their elected/paid position.

Hicking this should cover bottle service

———————————————————————————

I agree with Jason...salting your schedule with PMTG days out of seniority needs to stop.

These are voluntary positions. They shouldn’t be use to circumvent our seniority system. Our junior managers need to be addressed as well..but that’s a different mess Barret and Chris stuck us with.

Darren

[jjagoe]

Thanks Mike. Great post. You shouldn’t have to police every pmtg day. I’m all for partially paid positions.

Derek I have offered to join in 2 separate times.

HW..it was a lot more then 300,000

J

[dnicol]

Well this is what happens to me every year. I get a couple of days notice that I am needed to run the deployed/vacation bids. They never give me enough notice to book them in advance regardless of my efforts to nail down dates. At least for one of the bids, I am normally on a vacation day or a number of vacation days (it always takes more than one day to run the vacation bid and it used to take at least three to run the deployed bid until I wrote another program - no PMTG credit for that). The Company looks at the first grey days after the vacation and says "do you want us to put your PMTG days there?", I say "sure, I don't give a s**t so long as you put them somewhere". Now, if the PMTG days are placed immediately after the VGDO days, someone with an agenda may look at my schedule and say I manipulated it. Complete nonsense of course. The end result is that I get my PMTG days, I lose Vacation days that are never replaced, I get paid straight time, no-one is affected by the result, someone may start talking about ships on the forum I'm sure this happens to other fellas too.

It's a standing joke in the office that they nearly always chose my Vacation days for running bids.

(I will say that no-one has ever accused me of any malpractice though.)

Paying the MEC has been brought up a number of times but they have always been against it.

Mac

[thicking]

Jason, when you say partially paid you mean sched relief.... right? When we are back at full capacity I agree. Prez and VP should have sched relief in some sense. We are big enough for that!

[AOsinski]

MEC and Co... I personally have no issue with you having a beer with dinner. In fact, I'd like to buy you one myself.

[MBusuttil]

Hello again,

We've moved the bylaw topic over to here because it is visible to all of the pilot group. We had a discussion on the STAT days pmtg issue and will likely go with this wording:

"PMTG will not be awarded on the recognized STAT holidays unless it is needed for exceptional circumstances. And prior approval by the majority of the MEC is required."

The reason we are not eliminating the award on those days is due to the limitations it would place on our ability to operate. So what are those limits? First of all, we don't just work in Canada. That's the big one really. The Americans don't give a rats ass about Canada day and if there's a conference in the states in the summer, we might not be able to attend. Same with Europe. And we do go to conferences with the TUI pilots groups in Europe. Typical conferences in the states are jump-seat related but fatigue has been in the states as well.

Another large reason to have stat days available is for time zone acclimatization. Lastly, another minor reason might be that our operation doesn't stop on these stat days so why should our Union? Take your pick, but I hope that this wording above ensures that it is not 'cherry picked' or 'salt and peppered' on the schedules.


Mike Busuttil

[dacri]

A move in the right direction.

How about adding this bylaw as well Mike?

Any member in good standing will be given full unobstructed access to all bank accounts, statements, forms and original receipts.

Note: If any elected Union Official or Accountant is found to be obstructing another member seeking transparency they will be removed from their elected/paid position.

I’m sure our current MEC is all about inclusion of members and transparency.

Cheers
Darren

Sorry Butcher...can’t make Barret’s election campaign meeting. Keeping busy working...Probably not a member in good standing anymore. lol

Seeing the COVID 19 nonsense this year...maybe Keg gift cards are a better option???

Merry Christmas